Nerd Rage: Misery ‘Business’
What you’re about to read might not please everyone. You may or may not agree with some of the arguments made, but that’s the purpose of “Nerd Rage”. I would just like to say that this post isn’t exactly “Nerd Rage”, as it is more of an observation. A “Nerd Observation”, if you will. The idea for this little discussion spans from an article I read many months ago– the 7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable. Today, it’s obvious to see how technology is affecting us, but no one wants to step up and talk about it. I’m not someone who shouts to “fight the power”, but allow me to take this time to elaborate on those seven reasons.
As I begin, I draw your attention to a piece of stock footage that I stumbled upon a year ago. In this very brief clip, Peter Johnson-Lenz talks about the influence of computers on society. He felt that, over time, people weren’t going to shut everyone out and just stay inside. It should be noted that this statement by Johnson-Lenz was said in 1979, before computers were widely used as they are today. Though we might not be locked up in our houses, the growing problem seems to be that we view our lives online to hold more importance than in actual every day life.
Roughly three weeks ago, I graduated High School. Sitting here typing this, I can honestly say I’m glad I did. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the people I went to school with, because they were some of the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life. No, the reason I’m happy is because I no longer have to listen to the drama. Each week, I’d walk into school and hear girls in the corner bickering about what happened over the weekend. Passing by, I’d hear the occasional, “He was like..” and “OMG, totally!”. The best part is that these ‘incidents’ they were talking about didn’t even take place face-to-face. A majority of them took place on that great little invention by Mark Zuckerberg—Facebook. I began to think, have we really latched onto this website as a lifeline of sorts? Agree or not, the correct answer is yes.
Why do I say that? As a society, we have cut down on actually meeting with people. Instead of talking to a person, we message them over the internet or via text. In the process, we’ve become obsessed with what other people are doing, even if you don’t know them, at all hours of the day. It’s actually sad to see how much is judged just by looking at persons Facebook profile. I can tell you right now, if you want to know about me, you shouldn’t even bother looking at mine. The only thing you’ll take away from it is that I’m a wrestling fan quite simply because I don’t believe in putting your life online for everyone to see.
Before departing High School, several of my teachers kept telling everyone to be careful what you put on Facebook, because colleges look at that now when accepting students. Wow, really? If that’s true, colleges are lowering their standards. They’re going to sift through applicants accounts to see how much of a “good good” you are? I thought there was something called Privacy. Oh, my mistake, there is no such thing as privacy anymore. Want proof? Two weeks ago, a picture surfaced online of a young boy trying to hand a flower to Megan Fox.
I found it humorous, but then I found something out that was a little unsettling shortly after. Kodak publicly offered $5,000 dollars to anyone in the world who could track down this kid. Where do you think was the first place they looked? Yep, you guessed it: Facebook. Not only did they find him, we also learned that this 11 YEAR OLD had made himself 10 years older when signing up for the site. To prove that point further, I conducted a little experiment. Over a month ago, I decided to send a random friend request to a girl (no NK, not that girl) I never talked to, met, and pretty much never knew existed until this year. She saw it, and accepted it. Hold on; let’s take a look at this here. I just “asked” someone I don’t know if I could have access to their account. This allows me to see where they work, go to school (durr), and have the ability to see their phone number, screename, etc. 
Essentially, this girl just let a complete stranger know all this information about her, without even considering the consequences. The only reason I can think why someone would do this is because, no matter who it is, we accept Facebook friend requests. We want to have that one extra person to boast our number of friends, and to make others think that we “know” all these distant people. A random guy from India could send a friend request to everyone on Facebook, and I bet 60% of the users would accept it. Unfortunately, our good friend Roof knows what I’m talking about.
The problem doesn’t just come from Facebook either. Towards the beginning of the year, I did a piece on how Twitter was gobbled up by the media, and I must say I’m ashamed that I still have one. Yes, it’s fun to update little things to make your friends laugh, but once you start updating every 10 seconds, you have a problem. For some people, the entire website has turned from little conversations to completely endless/pointless messages letting people know the every detail of your life. Every day, I read a tweet that someone is “watching _________”. Really now? If you’re watching a TV show or movie, why do you have your computer on, and are talking to friends at the same time?
That’s a big reason, why I feel, a portion of people are miserable. They aren’t taking the time to enjoy things. For me, I watch wrestling four nights a week. Whenever it’s on, I take my laptop, and turn it off. Why? I want to actually WATCH the program. Not be on my computer and glance up every 5 minutes. I honestly believe that’s why a good chunk of today’s shows survive. No one is genuinely watching them. They have them on in the background for ‘company’, and pick their heads up to see them every now and then, catching a punch-line or two. The Office, Chuck, My Name is Earl, Scrubs, and Ugly Betty–all of these shows are mediocre at best.
Same goes for an industry that we focus on here at NK—videos games. When a new video game comes out, no one buys it anymore. They rent it, beat it in a week, and then say it was “alright”. My only question to these people is what’s the rush? It’s not like what’s written on each disc shipped is going to vanish into thin air. Slow it down. Take your time with your games. Hell, I’m still not even half way through Halo 3. I don’t get how making it seem like finishing a game on a deadline is fun, at all.
We’ve really just become a bunch of complainers. I mean, that’s the reason we have this feature on the site to begin with. To talk about what bugs us. HollywoodRS uncovered an entire website, FML (F*ck My Life), where people complain about how bad their lives are on a daily basis. The posts that pile up each and every day on it are just plain depressing. Can these people really not see the good in life anymore? I challenge anyone who posts on FML to have an entire police department, administration, faculty, and 1000 students + their parents on their back. Then, tell me how bad your life sucks.
As a wrestling fan, I’m constantly linked to shoot interviews with wrestlers. Right after the untimely death of Heath Ledger, the Ultimate Warrior decided to sit down for thirty minutes and talk about this young man. Most people don’t like his attitude, but I feel everyone needs to watch this video. A major point that he brings up is we have become a culture of self destruction. If you simply search YouTube, you’ll find videos of the youth doing anything possible to get attention. It doesn’t matter if they think it’s right or wrong. They will choose to compromise their beliefs if it means 15 minutes of fame. The biggest video last week was a kid “flipping out” because his mom canceled his World of Warcraft account. My honest opinion: it was staged. A clever little video made by two brothers to soak in e-fame.
One last point I want to touch on is movies. Here’s a little story for you. Last week, I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Since I didn’t want tweens yelling in my ear, I picked seats far up on the back row. Suddenly, this woman and her kids come to sit next by me. Alright, fine, no big deal. The next moment, during the trailers, she whips out her iPhone and starts texting. I’ll do you one better—she did it for the entire first half of the movie too. Are we seriously that deep into “social networking” that we can’t take the time to sit through a simple movie without using our phones?
Everywhere someone goes now; there is an opportunity to get online to any social networking site. When I go on vacation, I don’t wanna think about anything else but enjoying where I am. But today, people bring their laptops. So, they really aren’t getting any vacation. They are still glued to what they are reading on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Take the time to relax. You can do without the ‘internetz’ for a week. I’d love to see if someone could survive one week without it. OoOoOoO…..I smell a NK Original Video cooking. ^_^.
Like I said, you might not agree on everything said in this. If I could borrow a quote from a certain someone, “I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.” It’s obviously this article doesn’t apply to everyone. Those ones it doesn’t more than likely use Twitter and Facebook conservatively. I hope you enjoyed reading this, as it has been undergoing some drafting for three weeks now. I’m not the best writer, but I hope you took something away from this. Oh, and I didn’t forget you Matt2 
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Justin “The Pepsi Plunge” Verterano
5 Responses to “Nerd Rage: Misery ‘Business’”
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NK Flickr!
Just wait because when you get to college it is all going to be about what goes down of Facebook, trust me.
On the point of Twitter: I think that if you or your life lacks the ability to be insightful or uneventful, you shouldn’t tweet. Nobody cares if you’re just watching TV or sitting at home. I’m interested in people’s thoughts over certain things: random ideas or questions that pop up into people’s heads, opinions about the latest movie, and funny quips throughout the day — or, on a professional side, when a new podcast is coming out or a friend’s article.
Twitter still seems to be misunderstood by the general public.
There are two issues in your article:
1)You watch wrestling
2)You are still playing Halo 3
I agree with a lot of that, Pepsi. When I saw the new Transformers, a girl actually answered the phone in the movie. Some guy yelled “hang it up!” and I thought it was hilarious.
But for real, the majority of people seem to NOT be able to take a break from that stuff. In the nicest way possible, you’re not so important that you have to let EVERYONE know what you’re doing.
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